


Shared Spaces

by rhodrymavelyne



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:35:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28661832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhodrymavelyne/pseuds/rhodrymavelyne
Summary: Will Graham promised Dr. Alana Bloom and himself he wasn’t going to let Hannibal Lecter in, but it’s hard when their memories share spaces, and their minds instantly take them to those spaces.
Relationships: Molly Graham/Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 9





	Shared Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after What Could Have Been. It's also during the second meeting between Will and Hannibal during his first visit to the asylum in And the Woman Clothed With the Sun. I don’t own Hannibal, but for over a year it has owned me.

I could feel my treacherous eyes locking onto his, my mouth going dry. All he had to do was look at me. The barrier of glass was no protection from the past, from the familar places in Hannibal Lecter’s memory palace. In his office, his armchair awaited. Such details swam out of reality to engulf me.

Calling him Dr. Lecter had only invoked this place. 

Hannibal watched me with a small smile, his prison jammies turning into one of those plaid suits only he could get away with wearing. Perhaps he sensed my struggle, the trap I’d opened. As he’d once said, his memory palace shared rooms with my own. This was one of them. 

“As I said, I’m glad you’re here.” Master of his surroundings even if it was my mind, he glanced at the desk, the waiting chairs. “You’re a breath of flesh air after my other visitors, revitalizing these rooms, giving my memories energy.”

“That energy might have been yours if you’d eaten it in Florence.” Was I sorry he hadn’t? I’d never have met Molly again, or become Wally’s father if Hannibal had eaten me. I never would have been given a second chance at life. 

I never would have seen Hannibal again. He would have been the last thing I would have seen or would it have been Jack?

Stop right there. 

“For a few precious mouthfuls, perhaps a few hours, only to be digested, perhaps lost forever.” Hannibal looked at me sideways. “No, I’m glad I was stopped in Florence. That’s not the ending I wanted for us, even though it seemed right at the time.”

“It seemed right at the time.” I let out a dry chuckle. “You have a unique notion of right and wrong, Dr. Lecter.”

“As do you, Will.” He gave me another little smile. “You wouldn’t be able to enter my memory palace if you didn’t.”

I couldn’t argue with that. 

“A pity you never saw the Tuscan villa, the one I might have bought if you and Abigail accompanied me instead of Bedelia.” He looked up me up and down. “I made certain it was near a stream. I tried to make it the ideal place for us.”

“Still looking for ideals where we’re concerned?” A smile tugged at my face, which I bit my lower lip to keep from coming. It was just a smile. It still felt disloyal to Molly. “I can’t imagine you being happy such an isolated place.”

“I would have turned it into an agurturisimo.” He smiled a bit, studying my face. “You could have fished in the stream. Abigail could have hunted for cinghale. Depending on how successful you were, you could have provided the meat for the table.”  


This was uncannily like the dream I’d had, what Hannibal had said in the dream. “And if we weren’t successful, you would have provided it.”

“There are a lot of rude tourists whom crowd the Cinque Terre and make the residents unhappy.” Hannibal smiled at his own joke. “I would have doing a public service.”

Again, this was very close to the dream except for the comments about public service, comments I’m sure he believed. “Do you think about her? Abigail?”

“Often.” The smile straightened into something more sober. “Do you, Will? Or does your family distract you from her memory?”

“Sometimes.” I allow a brief, bitter smile to cross my face. “Only sometimes.” 

“Abigail is a reminder that family members are precious and irreplaceable. One might fill the emptiness left by the absence of another, but they can never truly replace them.” Hannibal moved closer to the glass. “As I said, you are family, Will. I could never replace you. You will find, given time, it is impossible to replace me.”

“I’d never try to replace you.” The words came out choked with all the contrary, contradictory feelings I’d been holding back, good and bad. 

He was a psychiatrist, well, former psychiatrist. Let him work out their meaning. 

I turned and walked out of his office and out of the door which led to room where his glass cage existed. Even on the other side of the door, his presence seemed to live and breathe in the air. 

I could either breathe it or hold my breath.


End file.
